Amy Coney Barrett

[iceaura]

The collection of "racist, homophobic and misogynistic" means only the left hates him.

Always with the "hate", these guys - which is always projection.
Where did that string of adjectives come from? Not from my posts here.
Imho Scalia was not homophobic, for example. He was racist, of course - hard for an American to avoid without serious and conscious effort - but that was not my objection to him. My objection was that he was shallow and trivial and unwise and belligerent in his errors, and that he frequently misread the very Constitution he claimed to treat as original text - that the people who wrote it were more intelligent than he was, and he was unaware of that fact.

And that Barrett is inferior even to Scalia in that respect. She's a member of a fundamentalist Christian religious cult. She's a partisan Republican. She dissembled and misled when questioned about her associated biases - possibly but not certainly from lack of self awareness, but certainly in language coached into her by political operatives. She's not fit for the Supreme Court.

Once this is clarified, it is clear that according to the meaning of the word "person" and according to the original meaning theory all the rights which the constitution gives to persons have now to be interpreted as being given to those blacks without property who have personhood now too.

The "original meaning theory" (your term, we will have to guess at it) supposedly applies the original meaning of "person" - the meaning in force when the provision at issue was written.
- - - -

It is obvious that you need to be a judge, since the cases that come to your court are legal cases, referred from lower courts.

That doesn't follow.

Notice that no one can be expert in such a wide range of technical law. That's not central to the job. If some technical legal matter has significance in a particular case, all sitting Justices rely on clerks hired from law schools to bring them up to speed - which they could do for anyone with the necessary experience and intelligence.

If you start appointing people who are not even judges you really will have a game show on your hands

Unlikely. Certainly not as slapstick a game show as we've been getting from the judges appointed by Republicans to the Court, who get past the nut-case screening by waving paper credentials.

Besides: That's not what happened. The Court was at least as competent and well respected when it had mere law readers - lawyers with no law degree, who were not judges - sitting on it as it is today when populated by mickey mouse partisans who happened to know a politician.

Check out the reasoning on that Voting Rights Act ruling, for example. It's quite silly. The Court actually ruled that Texas was no longer influenced by racism in the drawing of political district boundaries. That's not just wrong, but goofy.

The nature of the American Constitution is one of the things foreigners seem to have a lot of trouble comprehending - it's not a body of laws. There's no penalty for "breaking" its provisions. The Supreme Court does not oversee trials, hand down sentences, enforce laws, assess guilt or innocence, etc. It follows arguments and reasoning and draws conclusions. Barack Obama, for example, is more fit and better qualified to sit on the Supreme Court than half its currently seated members.

 

[Schmelzer]

racist, homophobic and misogynistic

Always with the "hate", these guys - which is always projection. Where did that string of adjectives come from? Not from my posts here.

From Parmalee, #40
Seeing hate is not always projection, but if it comes from the left, it is with high probability. As negative feelings from the right wing contempt and disdain are much more typical. That contempt and disdain were interpreted as essentially right-wing is something I observed accidentally in some German left-wing forum. I was surprised about this, but thinking about this, it made sense. Contempt is the feeling of the ruling guys for those ruled, not that of the revolutionaries who want to overthrow the existing order. They have to hate this order, else they would not be motivated to destroy it. To start a revolution one needs hate. If you are full of contempt, you will not start a revolution.

Imho Scalia was not homophobic, for example. He was racist, of course - hard for an American to avoid without serious and conscious effort - but that was not my objection to him. My objection was that he was shallow and trivial and unwise and belligerent in his errors, and that he frequently misread the very Constitution he claimed to treat as original text - that the people who wrote it were more intelligent than he was, and he was unaware of that fact.

I don't care, my point was simply that the originalists have a quite plausible position. If Scalia or others don't follow that position in their real decisions is for this question an irrelevant ad hominem.

The "original meaning theory" (your term, we will have to guess at it) supposedly applies the original meaning of "person" - the meaning in force when the provision at issue was written.

As Wiki writes,

original meaning is the dominant form of the legal theory of originalism

so that it is a theory, and I have added this to "original meaning" to clarify that I don't have in mind some particular original meaning, like that of "person", but that theory.

There are, of course, also different meanings for a particular word at that time too. One meaning is "as defined by the laws or rules which regulate who is a person", another one refers to the content of the particular regulation which was actual at that moment. In principle, one could say that both define some sort of "original meaning". But which of these two meanings is relevant for the "original meaning" theory is IMHO quite obvious. Not?

Well, lets just concentrate on the premise, ok? “Freedom can only exist within boundaries.”

No problem. That's a triviality acknowledged by anarchists too. There are natural boundaries, there are boundaries set by other people.
Maybe we remember also the context of your "Freedom can only exist within an orderly pattern of social engineering with consideration of the human "foot-print" on Earth"? It was answering my

There are, obviously, two responses to a constitution which was written originally for white property-owning men. One is to extend the rights given by the constitution to other people too, the other one to remove these rights from white property-owning men, so that nobody has any rights, and the government becomes almighty. The left actually seems to prefer the latter.

So, I was not defending at that point anarchy, but a state ruled by a constitution interpreted rigidly, against a state free to "reinterpret" that old outdated constitution, free to experiment without restrictions with globalist "social engineering".

 

[Write4U]

So, I was not defending at that point anarchy, but a state ruled by a constitution interpreted rigidly, against a state free to "reinterpret" that old outdated constitution, free to experiment without restrictions with globalist "social engineering".

Experiment with what freedoms? Name a few. Amending the Constitution to correct flawed but codified social attitudes of freedoms and responsibilities is IMO, "beneficial" social engineering.

Do you believe that "unregulated Capitalism" is a beneficial application of "freedom"?
Do you believe in climate control?
Do you believe that exemption from EPA regulation is beneficial to "climate control".

Are you familiar with "Halliburton Loophole", which exempted large fracking companies from "burdensome" EPA air and soil pollution regulations, in order to stimulate the economy?

Are you familiar with the Love Canal disaster?

In 1890, Love Canal was created as a model planned community, but was only partially developed. In the 1920s, the canal became a dump site for municipal refuse for the city of Niagara Falls. During the 1940s, the canal was purchased by Hooker Chemical Company, which used the site to dump 21,800 short tons (roughly 19,800 t) of chemical byproducts from the manufacturing of dyes, perfumes, and solvents for rubber and synthetic resins.

At that time there were no comprehensive regulations of Hazardous Waste Disposal.

Love Canal was sold to the local school district in 1953, after the threat of eminent domain. Over the next three decades, it attracted national attention for the public health problem originating from the former dumping of toxic waste on the grounds. This event displaced numerous families, leaving them with longstanding health issues and symptoms of high white blood cell counts and leukemia. Subsequently, the federal government passed the Superfund law. The resulting Superfund cleanup operation demolished the neighborhood, ending during 2004.

In 1988, New York State Department of Health Commissioner David Axelrod called the Love Canal incident a "national symbol of a failure to exercise a sense of concern for future generations".[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal

 

[exchemist]

Always with the "hate", these guys - which is always projection.
Where did that string of adjectives come from? Not from my posts here.
Imho Scalia was not homophobic, for example. He was racist, of course - hard for an American to avoid without serious and conscious effort - but that was not my objection to him. My objection was that he was shallow and trivial and unwise and belligerent in his errors, and that he frequently misread the very Constitution he claimed to treat as original text - that the people who wrote it were more intelligent than he was, and he was unaware of that fact.

And that Barrett is inferior even to Scalia in that respect. She's a member of a fundamentalist Christian religious cult. She's a partisan Republican. She dissembled and misled when questioned about her associated biases - possibly but not certainly from lack of self awareness, but certainly in language coached into her by political operatives. She's not fit for the Supreme Court.

The "original meaning theory" (your term, we will have to guess at it) supposedly applies the original meaning of "person" - the meaning in force when the provision at issue was written.
- - - -
That doesn't follow.

Notice that no one can be expert in such a wide range of technical law. That's not central to the job. If some technical legal matter has significance in a particular case, all sitting Justices rely on clerks hired from law schools to bring them up to speed - which they could do for anyone with the necessary experience and intelligence.
Unlikely. Certainly not as slapstick a game show as we've been getting from the judges appointed by Republicans to the Court, who get past the nut-case screening by waving paper credentials.

Besides: That's not what happened. The Court was at least as competent and well respected when it had mere law readers - lawyers with no law degree, who were not judges - sitting on it as it is today when populated by mickey mouse partisans who happened to know a politician.

Check out the reasoning on that Voting Rights Act ruling, for example. It's quite silly. The Court actually ruled that Texas was no longer influenced by racism in the drawing of political district boundaries. That's not just wrong, but goofy.

The nature of the American Constitution is one of the things foreigners seem to have a lot of trouble comprehending - it's not a body of laws. There's no penalty for "breaking" its provisions. The Supreme Court does not oversee trials, hand down sentences, enforce laws, assess guilt or innocence, etc. It follows arguments and reasoning and draws conclusions. Barack Obama, for example, is more fit and better qualified to sit on the Supreme Court than half its currently seated members.

I don't really buy this. In every other civilised country the supreme court, or whatever the final court of appeal may be called, is made up of experienced senior judges.

That's because they spend their time interpreting matters of law. Yes, of course, the US supreme court can be called on to deal with application of the constitution to a legal matter, but interpreting the constitution is far from its primary function. It is just the US final court of appeal.

 

[Schmelzer]

Experiment with what freedoms? Name a few. Amending the Constitution to correct flawed but codified social attitudes of freedoms and responsibilities is IMO, "beneficial" social engineering.

Why naming a few? All of them. Of course, for those who propose social engineering, it is always beneficial. They don't have to care about reality.

Do you believe that "unregulated Capitalism" is a beneficial application of "freedom"?

Unregulated capitalism does not exist. Less regulation would be good, but it will not come. Those who cry for "less regulation" want, in reality, only different regulation, in favor of those firms which pay them. And the regulation which will be removed is not the regulation which is really harmful for the people, but the regulation which is harmful for those firms.

Do you believe in climate control?
Do you believe that exemption from EPA regulation is beneficial to "climate control".
Are you familiar with "Halliburton Loophole", which exempted large fracking companies from "burdensome" EPA air and soil pollution regulations, in order to stimulate the economy?

First, I don't have to know about this particular case because this is what I expect from regulations. Firms with a sufficiently strong lobby will get exemptions. Those who are mainly harmed by over-regulation are small firms, they don't have any lobby, so they don't get any exemptions. Instead, they need a bureaucracy comparable to that of big firms to meet the bureaucratic requirements, and in comparison with their size, those costs are much higher for small firms. So, the "protection" of the sheeple is 95% propaganda, the main issue is fighting other firms using the lobby to write laws which harm the competitors more than oneself, with small firms without lobby as the predictable losers.

Then, I don't believe in climate control. While I have no doubt that there is some warming, and that some part of this is human-made, the climate hysteria is completely off and artificial. See https://ilja-schmelzer.de/climate/. Once climate control makes no sense anyway, the EPA regulation itself as well as any exemptions from it will be useful only for some firms lobbying it, and for nobody else (except possibly by accident).

Are you familiar with the Love Canal disaster? At that time there were no comprehensive regulations of Hazardous Waste Disposal.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal

I have heard about it. But why should I care about this? Reading that "Had the residents of Love Canal been aware that they were residing on toxic chemicals, most would not have moved there in the first place" I remember my childhood, which I have survived (with asthma) in the completely state-controlled environment of communist Eastern Germany. In my home town, it was not even necessary to forbid to swim in the river - it was visible to everybody that it was full with chemical waste. And even if no newspaper wrote about it, everybody
has known that asthma was caused by air pollution.

In fact, it is not even capitalism vs. socialism, but rich vs. poor. For the poor environmental pollution is simply not important enough to spend money for this. If the society becomes richer, people also start to care about the environment. So, today in my home town one can again swim in the river, and asthma cases are on a normal, unproblematic level. And the Chinese, which initially have created a lot of air pollution in the towns (wearing masks is not an issue there, many wear them anyway) start to care about air pollution now and have already reached some progress: Deaths from air pollution peaked 2013 and is now back to 1990 levels. So it became initially worse with capitalism in China, but now it becomes better. Capitalism vs. socialism is relevant only because only capitalism makes people rich.

 

[iceaura]

I don't care, my point was simply that the originalists have a quite plausible position. If Scalia or others don't follow that position in their real decisions is for this question an irrelevant ad hominem.

Barrett is one of those others. If she like the rest is not going to follow what she has claimed is her "position", she has been lying in her job interviews and should not be hired.

Seeing hate is not always projection, but if it comes from the left, it is with high probability.

As usual in this stage of Tribal posting, muddled grammar and syntax prevents any certain reading of posts* without clarification. But first:
1) Whatever you are talking about there requires one to identify the left, in the US. You are not able to identify "the left" in the US.
2) It would also require one to identify hatred and its absence in other people's writings. So far you've completely failed at that as well, to the point of confusing hatred with factors such as racial bigotry and racism
(one of the Fox News crowd's odder and more disconcerting items of bullshit - as a window on their thinking it's a serious threat and disturbingly frank admission, from you it's probably just another heedlessly parroted meme from your standard source). Although that is just as silly as your flailings re "the left", you haven't done us the favor of describing the thinking process behind your confusion and/or dishonest slander, so the kind of willful incapability so startling in your willful obliviousness to fascism may differ from the basis of your failure to locate hatred - but the failure itself is plain and well documented.
So that criterion would be useless to you even if it worked for others - which it
3) would not: in the US the left is less motivated by hatred than most other factions along that spectrum, and far less than the fascist right currently dominating US media. In addition the left is far more stringently restricted in its access to US media than is the right - further diminishing an already relatively sparse public display of hatred.
That is: The probability you rely on to cover for your admitted lack of evidence or argument is comparatively low, in the US, not comparatively high as your argument assumes.
Several intellectuals who focus on such matters ascribe that spectrum and correlation to the US leftwing connections and roots in Christianity and the more libertarian aspects of the European enlightenment, as well as the successful pandering of the authoritarian right to the Confederate honor culture and similar pockets of hatred in the US - Nixon's "Southern Strategy", employed by every national Republican politician since.

*Meanwhile: Once again the language breaks down into gibberish, right on cue. And once again the term "ad hominem" hits the chute in the gumball machine of US rightwing authoritarian vocabulary (- the carousel of US fascist agitprop memes seems to produce bimodal frequency distributions, demonstrating once again the greater significance and inherent interest of the propaganda itself compared with its alleged "content" or any meaning supposedly buried in it.

btw: That plausible originalist position is the one you find throughout my posting on Constitution-related topics. If you know what it is you can see how it works in one of the threads I posted in touching on the 2nd Amendment, where it pervades my posts - can you?

Meanwhile, your claims of seeing "hate" are parrotings from the last few decades of US corporate rightwing media feeds, an overwhelming barrage of simplistic and stereotypical fascist propaganda which you are also incapable of identifying for yourself (as you have explicitly corroborated in your many descriptions of how you handle propaganda, you can't see fascism unless it identifies itself to you via public display of the symbols and fashion accessories associated with the Nazi Party of 1930s Germany.

 

[Write4U]

Write4U said: ↑
Experiment with what freedoms? Name a few

Why naming a few? All of them.

I did not ask for all of them. I asked for just a few (1 or 2) examples.

Of course, for those who propose social engineering, it is always beneficial. They don't have to care about reality.

Apparently your argument is against a reality of an Oligarchy, not a Democracy.

Ideally, in a Democracy it is the peoples' representatives who pass legislation that is for the "common good" of all their constituents, rich and poor alike. If they do not perform to the public's expectations they are voted out.

 

[iceaura]

- In every other civilised country the supreme court, or whatever the final court of appeal may be called, is made up of experienced senior judges.

Rather than extrapolate from other people's judicial systems, one could simply take a look the history and current status of the Supreme Court of the US - it's not a secret tribunal.

In the past Supreme Court seats have occasionally been filled by men without law degrees or equivalent academic credentials - men who "read law" while working for practicing attorneys as a kind of apprenticeship, say. That is still possible in many States (lawyers are granted professional status by States, not by the Federal government), although increasingly rare as law schools became increasingly common. These judges compiled perfectly respectable and in some cases exemplary records of sound reasoning and wise rulings.

In the modern (post Reagan) era - and especially during Republican administrations - we have seen a professional record of raw partisanship or adherence to certain political positions become the major qualification outweighing all others, with evidence of wisdom or legal competence cobbled together mostly as window dressing. The Republican Party has gone so far as to outsource its political vetting of candidate judges to an organization permanently dedicated to the task, increasing the quantity as well the reliability of suitable nominees. This political vetting by the Federalist Society is now central to the Republican Party's nomination process, with other credentials employed largely as smoke and deflection. That was partly in response to having been surprised, in the past, by the behavior of Justices they had thought to be politically aligned with themselves.

Brett Kavanaugh, for example, has never actually tried a criminal case in a US court at any level - not as a lawyer, not as a judge. He recently spent a couple years on the bench of a high level Federal appeals court known for being a way station for those being politically groomed for possible Supreme Court nomination, where he did not particularly distinguish himself for insight or wisdom but did take the opportunity to make the reliability of his political positions and Partisan support widely known. Before that he was for years a Republican Party campaign lawyer and Partisan law firm connection, advising Republicans in their Partisan political battles with the goal of using the law to help Republican politicians win elections and ensure that Democratic Party politicians lost elections. That's what he did for a living most of his life, without apology and showing no sign of moral or ethical discomfort (even in situations such as the Florida election fiasco of 2000, where he might as well have been working as a defense attorney for organized crime).

Justice Roberts also advised the Republican Party in that case (traveling to Tallahasee to do so) and if Barrett is seated she will be the third Supreme Court Justice to have worked for the Republican side of that Republican Party created mess (pretty much generally conceded to have been the side in the wrong, btw, even by some of the key Republican figures involved - Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, for one).

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2020/09/amy-coney-barrett-bush-gore-election-trump

Barrett's apparent political beliefs

as evident in her long academic career's writings and her choice of University, her selection of schools for her children, her behavior during her recent short appointment directly to the high level Federal appeals court bench Bell mentions above, her continuing years of membership in a rightwing conservative Christian cult (by apparent coincidence the direct inspiration for a science fiction novel called "The Handmaid's Tale" - some women in the cult were called "Handmaids" until 2017 when the book became widely discussed), and so forth,

but not as described by her, during her hearing before the Senate: her responses were in the standard and disingenuous terms we have learned to expect from judicial candidates vetted by the Federalist Society,

are solidly rightwing conservative authoritarian extreme. As many people, including Trump himself, expect this Presidential election to be decided by the Supreme Court, her nomination and rapid confirmation is critical because of her assumed political beliefs. Otherwise there would be no rush - Trump and McConnell would have November and December and January to get her seated.

Yes, of course, the US supreme court can be called on to deal with application of the constitution to a legal matter, but interpreting the constitution is far from its primary function.

Interpreting the Constitution as it applies to legal matters is a primary function of the US Supreme Court, the one most at issue in these nominations, and the one most deeply and directly involving the sitting Justices as a body. The smaller potatoes are handled by clerks and individual Justices.

 

[exchemist]

Rather than extrapolate from other people's judicial systems, one could simply take a look the history and current status of the Supreme Court of the US - it's not a secret tribunal.

In the past Supreme Court seats have occasionally been filled by men without law degrees or equivalent academic credentials - men who "read law" while working for practicing attorneys as a kind of apprenticeship, say. That is still possible in many States (lawyers are granted professional status by States, not by the Federal government), although increasingly rare as law schools became increasingly common. These judges compiled perfectly respectable and in some cases exemplary records of sound reasoning and wise rulings.

In the modern (post Reagan) era - and especially during Republican administrations - we have seen a professional record of raw partisanship or adherence to certain political positions become the major qualification outweighing all others, with evidence of wisdom or legal competence cobbled together mostly as window dressing. The Republican Party has gone so far as to outsource its political vetting of candidate judges to an organization permanently dedicated to the task, increasing the quantity as well the reliability of suitable nominees. This political vetting by the Federalist Society is now central to the Republican Party's nomination process, with other credentials employed largely as smoke and deflection. That was partly in response to having been surprised, in the past, by the behavior of Justices they had thought to be politically aligned with themselves.

Brett Kavanaugh, for example, has never actually tried a criminal case in a US court at any level - not as a lawyer, not as a judge. He recently spent a couple years on the bench of a high level Federal appeals court known for being a way station for those being politically groomed for possible Supreme Court nomination, where he did not particularly distinguish himself for insight or wisdom but did take the opportunity to make the reliability of his political positions and Partisan support known. Before that he was for years - most of his adult life and professional career - a Republican Party campaign lawyer and Partisan law firm connection, advising Republicans in their Partisan political battles with the goal of using the law to help Republican politicians win elections and ensure that Democratic Party politicians lost elections. That's what he did for a living most of his life, without apology and showing no sign of moral or ethical discomfort (even in situations such as the Florida election fiasco of 2000, where he might as well have been working as a defense attorney for organized crime).

Barrett's apparent political beliefs

as evident in her long academic career's writings and her choice of University, her selection of schools for her children, her behavior during her recent short appointment directly to the high level Federal appeals court bench Bell mentions above, her continuing years of membership in a rightwing conservative Christian cult (by apparent coincidence the direct inspiration for a science fiction novel called "The Handmaid's Tale" - some women in the cult were called "Handmaids" until 2017 when the book became widely discussed), and so forth,

but not as described by her, during her hearing before the Senate: her responses were in the standard and disingenuous terms we have learned to expect from judicial candidates vetted by the Federalist Society.
Interpreting the Constitution as it applies to legal matters is a primary function of the US Supreme Court, the one most at issue in these nominations, and the one most deeply and directly involving the sitting Justices as a body. The smaller potatoes are handled by clerks.

What proportion of the cases heard by the Supreme Court in, say the last 3 years, have involved applying the constitution to them?

 

[Michael 345]

I did not ask for all of them. I asked for just a few (1 or 2) examples.

Well well well

Asked for a few, given all of them

Refused ALL OF THEM, INSISTING ON A FEW (1 or 2)

Has / did it not occur to you by giving you ALL YOU ARE FREE TO PICK YOUR OWN 1 OR 2?

Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth

 

[Write4U]

Follow the yellow brick road.....

Write4U said; ↑
Experiment with what freedoms? Name a few

Schmelzer said; ↑
Why naming a few? All of them.

I did not ask for all of them. I asked for just a few (1 or 2) examples.

Has / did it not occur to you by giving you ALL YOU ARE FREE TO PICK YOUR OWN 1 OR 2?

Yes it did, but that does in no way satisfy my request for a few examples. He made the declaration about "experimentation with our freedoms". The burden of proof falls on him to provide a few examples.

He used the phrase "ALL" to avoid giving me "ANY" examples because he doesn't have ANY.

 

[Schmelzer]

Iceaura wrote the usual BS, combining them all, "you don't know anything", "nobody but me knows what ad hominem means", "rightwing media feed" and more. Judging from the reaction, it looks like "getroffene Hunde bellen" (hit dogs bark).

I did not ask for all of them. I asked for just a few (1 or 2) examples.

And I have not understood the point of this question. I see no reason why I should name one or two freedoms, colors, animals or whatever.

Oh, now I see:

He made the declaration about "experimentation with our freedoms". The burden of proof falls on him to provide a few examples.
He used the phrase "ALL" to avoid giving me "ANY" examples because he doesn't have ANY.

LOL. Learn to read. See what I have written:

So, I was not defending at that point anarchy, but a state ruled by a constitution interpreted rigidly, against a state free to "reinterpret" that old outdated constitution, free to experiment without restrictions with globalist "social engineering".

There was not even a claim that your side has already succeeded getting completely rid of the constitutional restrictions. Up to now, for example, the 2. amendment has prevented complete disarming of the population. The experimentation with your freedoms will happen when you succeed, and the constitution becomes completely worthless. Up to now, it happens in small steps. Every new regulation takes away a little bit of your freedom. You will not even notice it. It becomes visible only over long periods, say, if people of different generations compare their childhood memories what they were allowed to do at that time.

Apparently your argument is against a reality of an Oligarchy, not a Democracy.

Western democracies are oligarchies, they are named democracies only for propaganda purposes.

Ideally, in a Democracy it is the peoples' representatives who pass legislation that is for the "common good" of all their constituents, rich and poor alike. If they do not perform to the public's expectations they are voted out.

I see no point to argue about utopia. Ideally, this thread would not appear in that utopia because neither Trump nor the Senate would even think about a partisan choice and all the judges would be completely neutral, so that it would be impossible to say who supports which political position.

Moreover, actually the US moves away from that utopia with surprisingly high speed. If somebody would have predicted two years ago what I observe now, namely that the US is no longer able to provide regular elections in a way that everybody is certain that at the end of the day it is clear who is the undisputed winner, I would have rejected it as complete nonsense. Hey, guys, go to Russia, ask Putin how to organize elections in such a way that nobody, even the combined power of Western media, has a serious chance to dispute the results. Instead, you argue about the nomination of a judge because you are already sure that, 1.) he will be partisan, 2.) that he will participate in the court decision who wins the elections, because 3.) the court has to decide because that the election results will be falsified by both sides with all of the many different known ways how to do this is obvious. Laughable. I would understand such problems in Kyrgystan, say, 5 years after the end of communism or so. Democracy, LOL, which is almost unable even to pretend that it is a democracy.

 

[iceaura]

What proportion of the cases heard by the Supreme Court in, say the last 3 years, have involved applying the constitution to them?

All of them, technically. It's part of the job.
And many of them involve questions not of the Constitution's application but of reason and meaning and physical fact and so forth - questions which legal expertise does not address, for which reasoning from a lifetime's carefully considered experience coupled with deep and sophisticated comprehension of meaning in verbal is the necessary capability.

But you would prefer something more definite, maybe.
Ok: https://ballotpedia.org/Supreme_Court_cases,_October_term_2020-2021 That is a list of the 33 cases the Court has so far agreed to hear in its 2020/2021 session. Of them, 13 involve the application of specific and explicitly named provisions of the US Constitution - such as the "First Amendment". That would be the bare minimum of cases involving Constitutional questions or applications - clearly some of the others are also likely to involve Constitutional issues (such as "Texas vs New Mexico" re interstate water rights and interstate commerce), that the summary description does not mention.

Also, and of pressing importance: we know that the nomination of Barrett anticipates several Constitutional cases not yet docketed that matter a lot to Republicans and Trump: the Voting Rights Act stuff that remains on the table, Presidential immunity from various legal procedures extended to his Cabinet and White House staff, the Constitutional restrictions on what Trump can do about the voting procedures and infrastructure nominally controlled by the States, the means of handling the inevitable Republican accusations of fraud etc if they lose in the vote (if the past is any guide the Dems will accept defeat gracefully and promise to move on and go forward and not point fingers if they are victimized by even obvious fraud and voter suppression), the ongoing violations of the Emoluments Clause, and so forth. The Reps want a Justice that will give them a majority of political loyalists on the Court to settle cases involving this next election, or even to settle the election itself (as in 2000). That's why they are in such a hurry to seat Barrett before November, even though Trump and the sketchy Republican Congressmen will be in office until January regardless of the outcome of the election.

The more serious question would be in how many of them the Court's "application" of the Constitution turned out to be significant - not to the case, but to American life.
The Citizen's United ruling, for example, may yet go beyond crippling and actually destroy the government of the United States. If it were the one and only case involving the Constitution to be considered that year, it would probably have outweighed all other cases in its implications and influence on nominee selection.

Has / did it not occur to you by giving you ALL YOU ARE FREE TO PICK YOUR OWN 1 OR 2?

Schmelzer has yet to give one, let alone all.
- - - -

Then, I don't believe in climate control. While I have no doubt that there is some warming, and that some part of this is human-made, the climate hysteria is completely off and artificial.

There is no "climate hysteria" in the scientific community or among the researchers who have been piling up the discoveries for fifty, sixty years now.
You really should check in with them, one of these days. The stuff you're posting is embarrassingly ignorant for someone who has been on a science forum for as long as you have.

Unregulated capitalism does not exist.

Depends on what is meant by "regulation" - piracy certainly exists in capitalist form, without benefit of law. Regions dominated by organized criminal capitalism are fairly common. Company towns and banana republics and the like spring up in lots of places where regulations don't exist or are not enforced.
Free-market capitalism is of course unstable, if not destroyed almost immediately self-destructive - it does exist, occasionally, but not long enough to be noticed.

 

[iceaura]

If somebody would have predicted two years ago what I observe now, namely that the US is no longer able to provide regular elections in a way that everybody is certain that at the end of the day it is clear who is the undisputed winner, I would have rejected it as complete nonsense.

Lots of people did predict that, and longer ago than two years.
As for rejecting the prediction as nonsense - No one who had followed the 2016 Presidential election (or the 2000 one) would have, except an unusually gullible sucker for the US corporate authoritarian media feed of course.
(Gore won in 2000, Clinton in 2016)

Meanwhile, you keep putting quote marks around your silly strings as if quoting somebody else - which reminds me that when spamming this forum with Republican propaganda originally aimed at idiots you seem significantly more aware and significantly less honest than you pretend to be.
That is, this is deliberate in all respects:

"you don't know anything", "nobody but me knows what ad hominem means", "rightwing media feed"

Not that one cannot sympathize - I wouldn't want to own that kind of response either. What if somebody went back and compared it with the actual post? But it doesn't belong here.

Judging from the reaction, it looks like "getroffene Hunde bellen" (hit dogs bark).

It does indeed.
You have now illustrated the accuracy of both of the two frequent observations of mine mentioned here:
that the rightwing parrot crowd for some reason cannot use "ad hominem" correctly in a sentence;
and that they (you) cannot paraphrase my posts accurately.

My recommendation has been - many times repeated to you and others of the Tribe, consistent for years now - that you quote rather than attempt paraphrase, and that you quit trying to use terms like "argumentum ad hominem" - especially that specific one - altogether.

That's good advice, and might if adopted lead you to understand what's wrong with seating someone like Barrett on the Supreme Court - take it or leave it.

 

[Tiassa]

A couple months ago, in a different discussion, an American conservative tried a particular maneuver; the criticism arose↗, "That's like sticking a knife in a political opponent, then saying 'but look, he's seriously injured. You sure you want to vote for someone who might not make it? I mean, common sense, people!'" It should have been sufficient to make the point, but the underlying conservative ruse is even more depraved; while the criticism referred, in its moment, to the current Postmaster General, the conservative cited the GOP gutting the Post Office in 2007 in support of his conservative criticism against the Post Office. In responding to the criticism, the one only made the point that much more clearly. To the other, he was also changing subjects in order to dodge a different subject.

Meanwhile, in the present:

If somebody would have predicted two years ago what I observe now, namely that the US is no longer able to provide regular elections in a way that everybody is certain that at the end of the day it is clear who is the undisputed winner, I would have rejected it as complete nonsense.

Well, right, but you don't ever really know what you're talking about, anyway.

When you make up historically ignorant melodrama in order to poodle for your favorite celebrity closet case—

Hey, guys, go to Russia, ask Putin how to organize elections in such a way that nobody, even the combined power of Western media, has a serious chance to dispute the results.

—you're pretty much showing your grift.

Recalling Nargum's first letter to Usbek should be more than any such discourse needs, so we probably ought leave alone what marks of indifference are not to be forgiven. Moreover, interpretive theatrical variations on an unfortunate literary joke have never really been your style except by accident.

Same thing with the line from a video game, a bit about governments organized according to the lowest qualities of people. But the black Australian bartender giving tribute to an American television series while working a triad nightclub in Hong Kong actually had a point. It was obvious over twenty years ago, when the line was new, but there was always some sense of glamour or enchantment about the freedom he described and poseur libertarianism it represented, and one could always recall Goldman eighty-some years before that, considering the dominion of man's needs and denial of his right to fulfillment.

The most part of what was unimaginable two years ago, or even four, depends on something else that was supposed to be unimaginable, which is the capitulation of American conservatives to the very machinations and outcomes they bawled and spewed and warned against for decades. That is, turns out the conservative grift is as real as people always thought, rank and file conservatives really were that low, and many of those awful things about what goes on in their hearts, that other people weren't supposed to say, are true. It's been going on for decades and, having finally won their chance, if the result is not exactly what the opposition expected, it's because we're really not supposed to presume so poorly of one another. To wit, the last ten years of McConnell's behavior would have been unbelievable to the pretenses of the Nineties and Aughts. The G.W. Bush administration's rush to war in Iraq would have been offensively unimaginable to Cold War pretenses of American prestige, dignity, and honor even during his father's presidency a decade earlier. People have had plenty of time to observe the repeating pattern, the old O'Rourke joke that Republicans will tell you what is wrong with government, get elected, and prove it. Except that's not quite right, anymore. Conservative failures of government in recent decades have actually been wilful inflictions. The Trump administration has resolved this beyond any reasonable doubt. What we see is not a failure of conservative governance, but its fulfillment.

In the game, freedom to gather wealth and own property was the real freedom. And, sure, it has its own context; and, yes, in that context it makes its point about what people choose. But at its intersection with Goldman, what we find in the American conservative result is that real freedom seems inextricably invested in the right to deny others the right to fulfillment, that one isn't free until they are empowered to refuse other people's freedom.

And we even see that in the christianist cult Judge Barrett is so intertwined with that the organization has been seen scrubbing its public presentation to erase her. For instance, a husband's religious freedom, in that group, requires that his wife cannot deny him sexual gratification.

Then again, many reflections on what should be more than any such discourse needs only come about because some aspect of the discourse requires it. Beyond that, it's one thing if Americans don't catch on easily, quite another if one's argument depends on people missing those points.

 

[iceaura]

Hey, guys, go to Russia, ask Putin how to organize elections in such a way that nobody, even the combined power of Western media, has a serious chance to dispute the results.

Short version: Americans already know how to "organize" elections as Putin does - we have had organized crime syndicates take over several American cities for a while, and of course there have been dozens of examples from the Caribbean and South or Central American countries.

In any democratically governed country the fraction of citizens who never did quite understand what the benefits of voting and representative government are and have been pose a threat - strongman government attracts them. They take pride in bullying, and will believe all manner of nonsense about the benefits of coercion and abuse.

In the US it seems that every second generation needs to relearn the lessons their alternate generations of ancestors learned by experience and observation - that organized crime does not govern well, guys like Trump (or Putin, for that matter) are parasites, violence destroys rather than builds, big talking does not create a matching reality, confidence and governing competence are not correlated, personal wealth and governing ability are negatively correlated, a government run like a business is a chaotic tyranny of criminal enterprise, and so forth. There's a reason the US didn't suffer the current popular resurgence of fascism until after the Americans who saw the Japanese and German concentration camps for themselves, who had heard and seen for themselves how guys like Mussolini sounded and looked, had grown old or died.

 

[Schmelzer]

Meanwhile, you keep putting quote marks around your silly strings as if quoting somebody else

You object now against those obviously satirical "quotes"? LOL.

My recommendation has been - many times repeated to you and others of the Tribe, consistent for years now - that you quote rather than attempt paraphrase, and that you quit trying to use terms like "argumentum ad hominem" - especially that specific one - altogether.

Given that personal attacks together with ad hominem is your main rhetorical device, you would obviously like it if others would no longer criticize your ad hominem arguments. Sorry, but nobody cares about your recommendations.

That's good advice, and might if adopted lead you to understand what's wrong with seating someone like Barrett on the Supreme Court - take it or leave it.

It is, of course, wrong to place Supreme Court judges based on partisan preferences. But that's how it has been done all the time. So, that's simply your system. The German one is not better, the Bundesverfassungsgericht is also a collection of judges supporting particular political directions supported by particular parties.

Short version: Americans already know how to "organize" elections as Putin does

Really? The US has already video observation in all polling stations accessible openly in the net?

- we have had organized crime syndicates take over several American cities for a while, and of course there have been dozens of examples from the Caribbean and South or Central American countries.

Oh, I see you confuse your own propaganda with the real elections in Russia. Just to clarify, I have no doubt that US elections are on a similar level as Russian elections as presented in US propaganda.

 

[sculptor]

If we want non corrupt elections, it seems most likely that we will need to do away with secret ballots.
Of course, then, fear of retaliation from the ruling party in the local or federal level, will be another corrupting factor. ( one uncle was afraid that he would lose his business license in Chicago when his wife registered as republican)
Is there any way?

 

[iceaura]

Just to clarify, I have no doubt that US elections are on a similar level as Russian elections as presented in US propaganda.

Another example of your substitution of propaganda for a physical reality unknown to you.

Really? The US has already video observation in all polling stations accessible openly in the net?

It has complete knowledge of how to corrupt or coerce an election in that manner, of course. The US has often pioneered such technological advances in undermining democratic governance, much as it pioneered democratic governance of a modern State in the first place.
The US also knows how to murder and blackmail and censor journalists, direct the minions of an authoritarian State to persecute political opposition, and in general employ all the tactics of organized criminal election fraud - several major US cities and regions have been subject to such governance and election oversight for decades, at various times in their histories.
The US was once organized around slavery-based capitalism, remember - Putin was not even born when the KKK was a dominant force over much of the nation.

It is, of course, wrong to place Supreme Court judges based on partisan preferences. But that's how it has been done all the time. So

More ignorance, this time of the nature of the Partisanship involved in US judicial branch nominations at the Federal level.
Bothsides is bullshit - a propaganda meme.
Briefly: No, that's not how it has been done normally or recently by all US political factions or Parties - for example, that's not how Obama did it just recently, with Garland and prior. (The modern Democratic Party preferences have normally included a long and consistent record of nonpartisan secular humanist judicial decisions, competent as well as honest public reasoning on complex matters, and personal circumstances free of obvious blackmail possibilities or necessarily secretive agenda).
Lying and dissembling in one's confirmation hearing and cv, for example, or a lifelong career as a partisan hack devoted to winning partisan political campaigns by fair means or foul, or a near total lack of relevant experience, has normally disqualified someone for the Supreme Court - prevented their nomination, let alone seating. The abandonment of such criteria recently has been a specifically Republican Party based change.

You object now against those obviously satirical "quotes"?

About every third or fourth time, to your repetitive attempts at deflection and propaganda parroting, especially the repetition of untruths standard in the current US fascist resurgence: now and often in the past.

The often repeated recommendation that you quote rather than attempt paraphrase, if adopted, might even enable satire as well as argument. As things stand, you have no chance.

Given that personal attacks together with ad hominem is your main rhetorical device,

As noted before, afaik I have never posted an ad hominem argument on this forum. Certainly none has ever been quoted back to me, for correction. You could use that as a starting point for the education you so often demand I provide. That would be difficult for you, though.
Here's an easier entry point: "Personal attacks" is/are not (a) "rhetorical device(s)".
Another: One does not "object against", in English. And attempting to pass off such posting as "satire" is ass-covering of near-Republican childishness - at least, if the reader assumes you know what the word "satire" means.

Why not rewrite your posting in this thread accordingly - as an exercise, say?

Even though you would never do anything like that, it is good that you recognize and object to the personal implications of certain characteristic features of your posting, especially the willfulness of your displayed ignorance and gullibility - that means you have the opportunity to learn, something denied most Americans who sucker so completely for the media feed from US fascist sources.

And as a bonus, if you did that here you might discover what is dangerous to you and yours about Trump's attempting appointment of Barrett or the like: as noted before for the education you keep demanding, when justice and diplomacy and rule of law and so forth have been dismantled and dismissed from US behavior as a nation, the most powerful military force on the planet will remain at hand for use by the likes of Mike Pence and Amy Barrett and Dick Cheney and so forth - and without the checks and balances formerly standard, or the representative civilian oversight once considered a point of honor.

 

[iceaura]

If we want non corrupt elections, it seems most likely that we will need to do away with secret ballots.

Or just go back to the non-corrupt secret ballots we - or at least I, here - have been voting with all our lives.
There are several State models still in working order.

Is there any way?

Of course.
Step one: beat the fascist takeover back under its rock, dismantle its Party, dismantle its media monopolies, impeach its judges and officials, and if necessary restore the Constitutional provisions it has damaged. Use the police. (The instigators and reps are almost all criminal - look at Trump's cabinet. A large fraction of the recent Republican judicial appointees have never been vetted, and lied during their confirmations - they are immediately impeachable. Barrett and Kavanaugh and Thomas, in particular, could be removed within days. And of course the media monopolies such as Facebook, Google, Sinclair, et al, are merely a judge or two from being sent the way of AT&T or Standard Oil).